HOUSTON, October 25, 2018 (PCW) -- Caliche Development Partners will begin commissioning its first shipments of ethylene this weekend as the company enters the final days of its processes to open its Caliche Coastal storage facility at Beaumont, Texas.

The cavern has the capacity to store 600 million pounds of ethylene. The site's brine pond have been certified by the Railroad Commission of Texas and tests on the cavern itself have been completed. The company will be flaring ethylene this weekend to cycle the site's system and the cavern is expected to be fully operational in early November.

The Caliche Coastal project began in 2Q 2017. The 53-acre site is atop the Spindletop salt dome, which is four miles south of Beaumont, Texas, and 52 miles east of Mont Belvieu. It will be only the second ethylene storage cavern open to the market for common use. The other is the storage cavern operated by NOVA Chemicals at Mont Belvieu. -- Kathy Hall